


Thanatopsis

by kirstenlouise



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Minor Character Death, Necrophilia, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 16:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/800931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirstenlouise/pseuds/kirstenlouise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly's not the sort of girl Jim would expect to find working in a mortuary. Then again, maybe Jim's never really met a girl like Molly before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thanatopsis

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Cold Shoulder](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/21042) by f-m-r-l. 



> Written for the 2013 round of Sherlock Remix. Many thanks to Musamihi for the beta and Peevee for the Britpick when no one else would touch my draft with a barge pole!

**APRIL 1989**

It had been a Wednesday. Molly remembered puddle-hopping in her new red wellies on their way back from the shop as Dad followed a safe, splashproof distance behind her.

“What will Mum say if you ruin—” His hand came down on her shoulder. “Mols, come this way,” he said. She knew now that he’d been trying to steer her around it. “Sweetheart, don’t—”

It was too late. Molly had already seen the matted, grey fur. She knelt down, heedless of the hem of her skirt trailing through the muddy water.

“That’s Mr. Patterson’s dog, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know that. It could be a stray.”

“No,” Molly said. “She’s got a collar.”

She reached out a hand, but Dad caught her by her sleeve. “Molly, don’t touch it.”

“We can’t just leave her here.” She was already sodden and swollen with water, like a sponge left to soak up a spill. “Someone should tell Mr. Patterson.”

Dad gave her jacket a gentle tug. “Mum’s waiting for us.”

It wasn’t right to walk away, as if they hadn’t seen anything, Molly thought as Dad led her off, pretending not to notice the glances she shot over her shoulder. The dog shrank into the distance as they made their way over the bridge, until she might have been nothing more than a mop-head left to moulder in the rain.

***

“Is this Mr. Patterson?”

“That depends on who’s calling.”

Molly twirled the cord of the phone around her fingers. “My name is Molly. I live down the road.”

“Charlie Hooper’s girl?”

“Yes.”

Some of the gruffness in his voice softened. “What can I do for you, Molly?”

“Mr. Patterson, is, um, did your dog run away?”

“Do you have her? Did you find my Opal?” Molly didn’t know what she ought to say to that. The line crackled with static. Mr. Patterson coughed. “I see.”

“We—my dad and me—saw her down by the bridge,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”

There was a long pause. “That’s all right, love. It was very thoughtful of you to call.”

Molly stayed on the line until she heard the disconnected drone on Mr. Patterson’s end. For a while after, she sat with the phone in her lap, thinking of the wet mop shape and the peeling leather collar until someone rapped on the door.

“Molly? What on earth are you doing in there?”

It was Mum. “Nothing, Mum.”

“Well, could you do nothing without the phone, dear? Your father has a call to make before the party.”

***

“Oh, let the girl have a little glass,” someone was saying.

Molly glanced up from her shepherd’s pie, suddenly shy at the realization that they were talking about her. Lawrence, sitting to her father’s right, smiled at her. Molly quickly returned to pushing her peas into two neat lines with the tines of her fork.

“The French do it,” remarked a voice she didn’t recognize.

“And the Italians.”

Molly sacrificed a pea to the floor below as Mum sighed. No one sighed quite like Mum. 

“Oh, a sip, then,” she said.

Lawrence nabbed Dad’s glass and held it out to her. Molly studied the dark, almost black bloom of the wine below for a moment before bringing it to her lips. It was tart and astringent. Her throat burned.

She made a face, prompting peals of laughter around the table.

Mum rolled her eyes. “I told you she wouldn’t like it.”

“It is a bit of an acquired taste,” Dad agreed. “Give it here, sweetheart.”

Her head swum pleasantly as the conversation resumed. By the time they’d made it to pudding, her ears were filled with a muffled buzz. Sleepy, she mashed at her cake.

Distantly, she heard Mum asking if Dad could please carry her off to bed. Molly held her arms out to be picked up. No sooner had she pillowed her head against a soft shoulder than she drifted off in a wine-grape sea of sleep.

Consciousness sifted down to her in layers. Molly heard a papery rustling and beneath it voices that echoed faintly through the walls. There was a sticky sound, a heaviness, and a sharpness.

Wet seeped through her pyjamas, first in trickles and then in a gush. She lay in a tepid puddle in the dark, half-asleep as a snuffling, grunting sound reached her ears and froze her.

Dad had told her once that if she ever found herself set upon by some wild thing, to play dead. Eventually, he said, it would go away. Most animals preferred their prey hot-blooded and struggling.

Molly made herself limp and kept her eyes closed.

***

**AUGUST 2010**

His name, he said, was Jim.

Molly hadn’t asked, because she hadn’t particularly cared to know. At least, not until it had been offered to her as a token along with half of a soggy turkey and tomato sandwich after she’d made her way to the canteen and realized she’d misplaced her purse.

“You must be the Dr. Hooper they keep talking about in IT,” Jim said. “You’re rather infamous up there.”

“I’m sorry,” she blurted out. His smile flustered her, with the way little crows’ feet cropped up around his warm, brown eyes. “It’s just—I’m terrible with computers. I can barely check my e-mail without breaking something.”

Jim laughed. “Not much call for computers in your specialization?”

“No, we’re still very much in the stone age, fortunately,” Molly said. “Everything’s still on paper. I work in the mortuary.”

Jim shuddered theatrically. “Seems odd, a girl like you wanting to work with all those bodies.”

Molly picked at the crust of her sandwich and shrugged. “Maybe you’ve just never met a girl like me.”

***

**NOVEMBER 1993**

A gust of cool air rattled the blinds as Molly climbed into bed with a torch. She shivered and burrowed under the duvet. Mum and Dad would expect her to be asleep by now. She thumbed through the dog-eared pages of her book until she found the place she’d marked earlier.

Her eyes scanned the familiar first words, illuminated by the ray of the torch. Molly curved a hand over the small bud of her breast and felt lightly at it through her flannel nightie. Another draft made her nipples stiffen into peaks as she skimmed the pages in search of her faint pencil markings.

Molly slipped a palm over her ribs and down her belly, fingers dipping absently into her navel as she read.

_“Her skin, pallid as winter, felt icy to the touch.”_

One-handed, she worked her nightgown up over her hips and sneaked a hand between her legs. Her thighs squeezed tight around her wrist. She bit at her lips, the ray of the torch bouncing unsteadily as she began to rub herself over the cotton of her pants until she could feel the damp seeping out against her hand.

_“No breath moved in her as the prince kissed her frozen…”_

The book slid off her, the torch rolling away, as Molly stuck her fingers through the leg of her pants to feel at the slimy wetness there. She pressed hard with her fingers and swallowed a gasp.

_No breath moved in her…_

_… icy to the touch._

Molly turned her face into the pillow, holding her breath around a moan.

_… he kissed her frozen mouth._

It was over in a hot little gush that made her thighs quiver. She gulped in air and wiped her fingers on her nightgown before rolling over. In the moments before sleep, she felt the slow crush of disappointment.

There was no reason she could see that Snow White had to wake up at all.

***

**SEPTEMBER 2010**

“We’re going to get caught, Jim.”

A nervous giggle burst out of her as he licked delicately at her collarbone. The top two buttons of her blouse were already undone, the plain white of her bra peeking through the gap.

“If someone walks in, I’ll be sacked.”

“But won’t it be worth it?” Jim scraped his teeth lightly over her breast. “Come on, Molly,” he whined, “you know I’d never get you sacked. Try to live a little.”

“Fine.” Jim brightened immediately. “What did you have in mind?”

“Hop up on the table. I feel like eating pussy.”

Molly unzipped her trousers before lying back. The metal was cool against her lower back and her thighs. She remembered sitting on tables like this, covered in the same loud, crinkling white tissue, at doctor’s offices, though never with her pants all wadded up around her ankles.

She turned her head to the side, away from the glare of the lights. It still smelled of bleach. She’d only just cleared away the first cadaver of the morning when Jim had waltzed in and caught her around the waist. The sweet, meaty smell of decay and the dizzy formaldehyde funk surrounded her as Jim kissed down her belly.

“God, I love a girl with hair on her pussy,” he said. He rubbed his nose in it. “You always surprise me, Molly.”

She crossed her arms over her chest as he began. His slurping made her shudder.

“Good?”

Molly closed her eyes. “You talk too much.”

***

**JUNE 1995**

Molly found her father sitting on the sofa with a copy of something by Tolstoy in his lap. She couldn’t read the Cyrillic, but she recognized the familiar configuration of letters stamped beneath the unfamiliar title.

His face had a waxy sheen to it. Molly closed his eyes, revealing the deep, peach-bruise purple of his eyelids. His cheek was still just slightly warm to the touch.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here. That wasn’t right,” she said. She sat and wrapped her hand around his, the once thick fingers eaten away to the bone. They felt brittle in her hand. “I’m here now.”

They sat together a while, until Dad’s fingers began to stiffen. They remained hooked in the shape of Molly’s hand as she let them go to wander into the kitchen.

She brought a bowl of cereal back with her. After a few bites, she didn’t feel like eating the rest. 

“Dad, there’s something… something I want to tell you.” She swirled her spoon around in her cereal, the soggy flakes floating on the murky surface. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I wanted to, but then you got sick and it didn’t seem fair anymore.”

Molly leaned against his shoulder. His jumper smelled powdery.

“I’m not angry at you,” she said, quietly. “Or Mum. I know you’d have stopped inviting Lawrence over if you knew.”

She buried her face in his sleeve and squeezed her eyes shut.

“I just need a little more time,” she told him. “If that’s okay.”

***

**DECEMBER 2010**

For the first time in weeks, Molly had a free Saturday. She’d hardly moved from the sofa since she’d woken, still pyjama-clad at two in the afternoon. A cup of tea sat cooling at her elbow.

She surfed idly through the channels in search of something suitably mindless.

_“—morning’s attempted theft—”_

“Definitely not,” Molly said. She clicked on and promptly froze.

_“—has turned himself in. James Moriarty is currently being held—”_

The words melted into the background, unimportant. Jim’s face stared back at her, unsmiling. His prison mugshot was unflattering, but even more, it was peculiar. There was a gravity to it she’d never seen before, overlayed with a sort of… backwards quality.

It felt like looking at him in reverse.

Her phone came clanging to life, startling her. Molly answered it.

“I don’t suppose you have a million pounds squirreled away somewhere,” Jim said, in lieu of a hello. His voice suggested that he was wearing that same boyish grin he had the first day they’d met.

At least, the first day Molly had met him.

“Molly? Come on, sweetheart. Talk to me.”

She took a deep breath. “You’re all over the telly, Jim.”

“I know. I’ve been very bad.”

“You lied to me. About a lot.”

“Yes.”

Molly picked a bit of lint from her pyjamas and rolled it between her fingers. “I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“Anything. Please,” Jim said, “just stay on a bit. I have only got the one call, you realize.”

“Why’d you use it on me?”

“Because I wanted to hear your voice. You’re the only person I want to talk to, Molly.”

For a long while, she listened to him breathing into the receiver.

“Don’t call here again, Jim,” she said, at last.

She hung up and switched off the television. She’d heard enough.

***

**SEPTEMBER 2010**

“Do you know anything about the ancient Egyptians?”

Jim nuzzled up under her arm. “Pharaohs, mummies. What’s there to know?”

“Before they embalmed them, the priests would let the bodies of beautiful women spoil in the sun for three days,” Molly said. “That’s what Herodotus says.”

Jim laughed. 

Molly rolled onto her side. “What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I can just honestly say I’ve never heard this sort of pillow talk.”

“I can stop.”

“No, go on.” He smiled. His knuckles slid over her bare hip. “I want to hear more.”

Molly traced the wings of his collarbone with her fingertip, bird-bone delicate beneath the thin layer of skin. “It still happens, you know.”

“What, embalming?”

“No, the other thing. In mortuaries, sometimes,” she told him. “Funeral homes mostly.”

Jim looked thoughtful. “Remind me not to let them take you away for at least four days.”

***

**JANUARY 2011**

On the third day following what the papers were calling the nation’s greatest miscarriage of justice in more than a century, Molly came home to find Jim asleep on the sofa, looking out of place in dove grey. There was a bottle of red wine on the end table.

Molly pulled a chair up and sat watching him. He looked serene as he slept, his breaths deep and slow. He hadn’t even remembered to take off his shoes.

She brushed the hair back from his eyes. On a whim, she kissed him. His forehead was cool under her lips.

Jim didn’t stir as Molly unbuttoned his shirt. She ran her fingers over the scant hair there, Jim’s heartbeat barely discernible even at this distance.

She squeezed her thighs together.

Jim had a long, curved scar on his abdomen. Appendectomy, maybe. She’d never noticed it before, but then Jim had rarely been naked anywhere but the waist down when they’d slept together. Molly thought she understood—nakedness exposed more than skin.

She ran a nail down the center of Jim’s sternum, neatly marking the first line of incision. Her nail left a thin, red line that faded into white before disappearing.

“Do you reckon you’ll end up on my table some day?”

“Mm, I hope not.”

Molly pulled her hand back with a shriek.

“Sorry,” Jim said. “Shallow sleeper. I was enjoying playing along, though.”

Molly feigned ignorance. “Playing along with what?”

Jim smiled without opening his eyes. “Nevermind. Give us a kiss? For old time’s sake?”

“I don’t know.”

“Darling, if I wanted you dead, I’d have done it ages ago,” he said. The velvet register of his voice, catalyzed by erratic bursts of adrenaline, pumped wetness between her legs. “Come here.”

Tentatively, Molly bent to kiss him. In the space of a breath, Jim had them flipped over. His hand made its way down her trousers a moment later.

“No knickers? _Molly_ ,” he said, feigning scandal. His fingers twisted into her in one deft movement and Molly’s head thunked back against the arm of the sofa.

Rationally, she knew that evil wasn’t a substance. It didn’t smell, or taste, of anything. It wasn’t something you could lay your hands on. But she imagined she could feel it, like a gently menacing fugue of air all around them as Jim manipulated his fingers inside of her.

“I never lied about this,” he told her. “You’ve never been part of the charade, Molly. Not for a minute. Am I to blame for the fact that Sherlock has such a poor imagination?”

“Sh-Sherlock?”

“He simply can’t imagine how I could want you when he’s had you right in front of him all these years and never even been _tempted_ ,” he said, with a vicious twist of his fingers.

Molly gave a choked moan despite herself.

“He’s never realized how special you are,” Jim whispered. He kissed her neck. “But I know your little secret, Molly dearest.”

***

**OCTOBER 2008**

“Are you family?”

Molly flexed her fingers against the edges of the open casket. “No.”

“I thought not.” The woman gave a small smile. “Did you know him?”

“He was a friend of my dad’s. I—I wanted to pay my respects. If that’s okay?”

“Of course. I’ll leave you alone.”

“Thank you,” Molly said.

She studied the body, wrapped in a fine blue suit, as the click of heels down the corridor faded into the distance. Looking at him made the skin on the back of her neck break out in gooseflesh. She fought to control her bladder, reminded after all these years of the first time he’d been at her. She’d wet the bed that night and most nights after for the next ten months.

Lawrence had grown bored of her after that.

Molly swallowed around the lump in her throat. “You’re lucky, you know. You don’t have to live with it anymore. It shouldn’t be like this. Everyone should know what you are. Were,” she said. She wiped at her cheeks. “You don’t deserve to be buried with that secret. It was mine to tell.”

A minute or two passed while she gathered her thoughts, willing herself to calm down.

“It’s done, anyway.” 

She dropped a fistful of coltsfoot into the casket and pulled her coat closed.

***

**JANUARY 2011**

“Sherlock?”

“I haven’t the time for idle chatter. You may have realized—”

“Jim was here,” Molly said. “At my flat.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just… I came home from the hospital and I found him asleep on my sofa. I don’t think he’s been sleeping well. He’s—he’s gone now,” she said, over the background clatter. _John, have you seen my scarf?_ spoken away from the receiver. “Sherlock, I said he’s gone. He’s not here anymore.”

“Well, what did he want?”

“Nothing.”

Sherlock scoffed. “Don’t be naive. Every man wants _something_. Especially men like Jim Moriarty. There must have been something he asked you to do, some bit of information he wanted. Otherwise, why bother—”

“I just thought you should know,” Molly said and hung up.

***

**JUNE 1995**

Molly swung her heels against the sofa as she sat watching a man press defibrillator paddles to her father’s chest.

“He had cancer. Pancreatic,” she said, to no one in particular. “It’s the same kind that got Grandad.”

A woman with dark hair crouched down in front of her. “What’s your name, love?

“Molly.”

“Is there someone I can call for you, Molly? Your mum, maybe?” Molly told her where to find the number. “All right. I won’t be a moment, petal. You just stay put while I call your mum.” She smiled. “You’re going to be okay.”

Once she left, Molly turned her attention back to the emergency responder taking care of Dad. He’d put his paddles away in the interim and was now drawing the zipper up over her father’s face.

“Are you going to do an autopsy?”

“That’s not really up to me to decide,” he said.

Molly palmed the small square of notebook paper she’d found tucked in her father’s book and sat contemplating her knees.

“I think I might like to do autopsies some day.”

***

**JANUARY 2011**

“Molly, what did you put in that?” Jim slumped against her side, his speech slurred. “Feels funny.”

“You’re going to sleep for a bit, that’s all.”

“Don’t wanna sleep,” Jim protested. He batted weakly at her. “Got things to do.”

Molly pressed him down on the bed. “Later, I promise.”

There was nothing after that but the slow slackening of limbs as Jim slipped into unconsciousness. She’d considered an injection of some sort—quicker uptake—but Jim never would have agreed.

Her little cocktail had removed the need to consult him at all.

Molly sat next to him and touched the back of her hand to his forehead. He was already beginning to cool nicely. She allowed herself a cautious smile, knowing he might wake up ahead of schedule. She hadn’t been especially precise about dosing him.

“I know you said you’d play along, but I don’t want to play at it, Jim.” She kissed his mouth, his lips slack, and pushed her tongue through to taste a moment before drawing back. “You talk too much. I told you that, but you never listened.”

Jim lay motionless, the very image of stillness. It was easy to ignore the movement of his chest, up and down.

“I like you like this,” Molly told him. She began unbuttoning her blouse. “Quiet suits you.”

***

Molly woke late the following morning, leg hooked over Jim’s hip. She turned her face into his shoulder.

“Please don’t be angry with me,” she said. “I just wanted—I knew you wouldn’t like the idea, but after everything you’ve put me through… It was the least you could do,” she decided. “You forgive me, don’t you?”

Jim said nothing, only stared away from her. It must have been the aftershocks of the cocktail. He would be sluggish for a while.

Molly kissed his shoulder. “Let me run you a nice, hot bath. That’ll make you feel better.”

***

Sherlock pressed his scarf to his face, nose crinkled in disgust. “My God, Molly, how long have you kept him here?”

Molly wrung her hands. She knew she was harboring a fugitive, but… “He didn’t have anywhere else to stay.”

“You have botflies,” Sherlock informed her. He strode past her into the bedroom, without any care at all for whether he would wake Jim. Molly kept her irritation to herself as he bent over the bed. “Why the plaster? The puncture—did you try to revive him?”

“It was an accident.”

“You accidentally punctured his breastbone?”

Molly jerked her head, feeling her mouth settle into a frown. Sherlock had just barged in without so much as a ‘May I come in?’ and now he was being _loud_ when poor Jim had already been through so much. They both had.

It took her a moment to realize Sherlock had pulled out his mobile.

“Sherlock? Wait. Sherlock, wait, please. I—I need him here with me.”

He glanced up from his texting. “This man is number four on Interpol’s most wanted list.”

“I know, but…” Molly couldn’t help a cry of frustration. “Irene fooled you with her trick. You can fool them.”

It seemed to happen in slow motion, the way Sherlock turned towards her. His hands came down on her shoulders, startling her. His voice was almost kind.

“Why don’t you go for coffee and let me take care of this, Molly.”

She tore out of his hands, head shaking. “No. I need him. I need—I need you to give a fake to the police. I’m not ready to let…” Molly balled her hands. Jim had to stay, at least until she understood. “You can’t take him, Sherlock. I won’t let you.”

“Molly, listen to me,” he said. “You’re very ill. You need to—”

“It isn’t fair!” A burst of hot tears slipped down her cheeks. It was happening all over. She wouldn’t let it. “Please, I need this. I need him. Please, Sherlock. Just for a little while.” She hiccoughed. “When have I ever asked you for anything?”

Sherlock stood looking at her for a long while before he finally spoke. “You’ll hand him over, then. When you’ve…” A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Finished.”

Molly nodded, frantic joy bubbling up in her.

“Very well,” Sherlock said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

***

**JULY 1995**

It was the hottest summer on record, according to the papers. Even the pavements seemed to sweat and blister in the dizzy, shimmering waves of heat. Molly sweated through her pants and vest as she stretched out on the bed and examined the water-damaged ceiling.

She rubbed the little square of paper between her damp fingers. It had been a month. It didn’t seem like any time at all.

Molly held the square up in front of her face. The edges were already fraying. She could let it rot. She could give it to Mum. She could tuck it back under her mattress where she would feel it like a bit of jagged glass sawing between her vertebrae every time she rolled over during the night.

Her fingers moved of their own accord. She stared, uncomprehending, at the ten words written there in careful, neat script.

_I love you, Molly. Some day, I hope you’ll understand._

Molly curled her fist around the words and lay sweating.

It wasn’t the kind of weather that permitted moisture enough for tears.

***

**FEBRUARY 2011**

The ancient Egyptians let beautiful women spoil in the sun for three days. After, they would slather them in honey to keep off the flies until they could be covered in wax and finally wrapped in strips of linen and gauze. But before any of this could happen, the embalmers had to remove her organs. Hollow her out. Her heart, lungs, brain, liver, would be preserved separately.

They weren’t quite there yet.

Molly ran her fingers through Jim’s hair where his head rested on her lap. Her hand came away matted, sticky with honey and dark hair. She made a fist around it as they sat listening to the low buzz of the botflies.

When the spring came, everything would thaw, including Jim. Until then, Molly planned to watch over him.

“Oh, _Jim_ ,” she laughed. She picked a stray fly from his sticky cheek. “There.”

She just needed a little more time.


End file.
